TY - JOUR A1 - Dorgerloh, Ute A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Volatile hydrocarbons in contaminated soil: Robustness of fractional quantification using headspace gas chromatography-mass-spectrometry N2 - Fuel contamination of soils display complex and variable hydrocarbon mixtures with different volatility and toxicity characteristics. A recently suggested headspace procedure for the structure-based quantification of volatile hydrocarbons is evaluated regarding repeatability, reproducibility, and practical robustness. Three aliphatic and three aromatic fractions covering the boiling range between 69 and 216°C were defined as summation parameters by their respective equivalent carbon number ranges. A standard mixture of 35 aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons was used for calibration on basis of selected mass fragments specific for the aliphatics and aromatics, respectively. Two standard soils were fortified with the standard mixture or different fuels, respectively, and submitted to the analytical procedure. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were for all fractions lower than 0.1 and 0.3 mg/kg, respectively. Analyte recovery was linear up to between 20 and 110 mg hydrocarbons/kg soil depending on the fraction. Hydrocarbon recovery ranged between 80% and 110% depending on the fraction and the repeatability was typically better than 10%. Finally, the impact of extraction solvent variation, column solid-phase polarity, and alternative summation of fractions were investigated. The procedure was applied to liner samples taken from a site contaminated with aviation fuel and its practicability is discussed. KW - Gasoline KW - Contaminated site KW - Equivalent carbon number KW - Fuel KW - Static headspace PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/15320383.2018.1418287 SN - 1532-0383 SN - 1549-7887 VL - 27 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Taylor & Francis AN - OPUS4-43889 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fischer-Tenhagen, C. A1 - Johnen, D. A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Becker, Roland T1 - A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer? N2 - Early and reliable diagnostic test is essential for effective therapy of lung cancer. Volatile organic compounds that are characteristic for cancer could serve as valuable biomarkers in cancer diagnosis. Both trace analytical and detection dog approaches give some evidence for the existence of such biomarkers. In this proof of concept, study dogs and trace analysis were implemented in combination to gain more information concerning cancer biomarkers. Two dogs were trained to distinguish between absorbed breath samples of lung cancer patients and healthy persons and succeeded with correct identification of patients with 9/9 and 8/9 and correct negative indications from of 8/10 and 4/10 samples from healthy individuals. A recent observational study found that breath samples from lung cancer patients showed an increase in 1-butanol, 2-butanone, 2-pentanone, and hexanal. Synthetic air samples were therefore fortified with these compounds and adsorbed to a fleece. Tested against breath samples from healthy probands, on presentation to the dogs these synthetic samples provoked an indication in three out of four samples. We were able to demonstrate that a combination of the natural nose of a dog and a trace analytic technique can be a valuable concept in the search for cancer biomarkers. KW - Lung cancer KW - Breath KW - Detection dog KW - Biomarkers KW - Sampling KW - Synthetic air PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00052 SN - 2297-1769 VL - 5 SP - Article 52,1 EP - 6 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne AN - OPUS4-44466 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -